Here's why Russians don't smile

Children,
wearing red neckerchiefs, a symbol of the Pioneer Organization,
salute while posing for a picture during a ceremony for the
inauguration of 18 newly adopted members at a local school in the
southern settlement of Kazminskoye in Stavropol region, Russia,
Nov. 19, 2015.Reuters/Eduard
Korniyenko

Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the
U.S. as a child of Russian parents.

Whenever I or my friends were having our photos taken, we were
told to say “cheese” and smile.

But if my parents also happened to be in the photo, they were
stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation
photos.

My parents’ high-school graduation pictures show them frolicking
about in bellbottoms with their young classmates, looking
absolutely crestfallen.

It’s not just photos: Russian women do not have to worry about
being instructed by random men to “smile.” It is Bitchy Resting
Face Nation, seemingly forever responding “um,
I guess?” to any question the universe might pose.

This does not mean we are all unhappy! Quite the opposite:
The virile ruler, the vodka, the endless mounds of
sour cream—they are pleasing to some. It’s just that grinning
without cause is not a skill Russians possess or feel compelled
to cultivate. There’s even a Russian proverb that translates,
roughly, to “laughing for no reason is a sign of
stupidity.”

Russians’ fondness for the gentle scowl seems even more unusual to expats than its actual,
climatic cold. And the cultural difference cuts both ways:
Newcomers to America often remark on the novelty of being smiled at by strangers.

So why is this? Why do some societies not encourage casual
smiling? I got my answer, or at least part of one, when I
stumbled across anew paper by Kuba Krys, a psychologist at the
Polish Academy of Sciences. In some countries, smiling might not
be a sign of warmth or even respect. It’s evidence that you’re a
fool—a tricky fool.

Krys focused on a cultural phenomenon called “uncertainty
avoidance.” Cultures that are low on this scale tend to have
social systems—courts, health-care systems, safety nets, and so
forth—that are unstable. Therefore, people there view the future
as unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Smiling is a sign of certainty and confidence, so when people in
those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why would you smile
when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might,
in those “low-UA” countries, even be considered stupid for
smiling.

Krys also hypothesized that smiling in corrupt countries would
be, um, frowned upon. When everyone’s trying to pull one over on
each other, you don’t know if someone’s smiling with good
intentions, or because they’re trying to trick you.

To test this theory, Krys had thousands of people in 44 different
countries judge a series of eight smiling and non-smiling faces
on a scale of honesty and intelligence. He compared their answers
to the country’s rankings of uncertainty avoidance from
a 2004 study of 62 societies and ratings of
corruption.

He found that in countries like Germany, Switzerland, China, and
Malaysia, smiling faces were rated as significantly more
intelligent than non-smiling people. But in Japan, India, Iran,
South Korea, and—you guessed it—Russia, the smiling faces were
considered significantly less intelligent. Even after controlling
for other factors, like the economy, there was a strong
correlation between how unpredictable a society was and the
likelihood they would consider smiling unintelligent.

Intelligence and Smiling

Countries
to the left of the red line consider smiling people to be
significantly less intelligent than non-smiling individuals;
those to the right are the opposite.Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Honesty and Smiling

Countries
to the left of the red line consider smiling faces to be less
honest.Journal of Nonverbal
Behavior

“This research indicates that corruption at the societal level
may weaken the meaning of an evolutionary important signal such
as smiling,” Krys writes.

That’s certainly a satisfying explanation. But it’s worth noting
that other studies have found there might be other factors, like
how hierarchical or masculine a culture is, that play a greater
role in emotional expression—which smiling is certainly a part
of. And there’s evidence that some cultures don’t value
happiness very highly, which would affect how often people there
force themselves to break into a grin.

Finally, ranking countries in order of their uncertainty
avoidance can be kind of fraught. (Not to mention time-dependent:
Consider how “certain” pre-2010 Syria or pre-2008 Greece might
be.) Confusingly, there’s an entire other ranking system of uncertainty
avoidance, designed by a different researcher named Geert
Hofstede in the the 1980s, and the two rankings have completely
different results.

You know what they say about trying to understand
Russia with the mind
alone, and apparently questionnaires aren’t a whole lot
better.

Krys’ work could use expansion and replication, to be sure. But
it might at least be comforting for any chipper Americans who
find themselves scratching their heads in that sanctuary of
seriousness, the St. Petersburg metro.